Orissa High Court Directs DGP & Home Department To Train Police Officers To Mandatorily Provide Written Grounds To Arrestees

The Orissa High Court has raised concerns about repeated cases of non-compliance of mandatory constitutional as well as procedural requirements, under Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Section 47 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (akin to Section 50, CrPC) respectively, by police officers to provide grounds of arrest while arresting any person.A Bench of Justice Gourishankar Satapathy highlighted that such dereliction on the part of arresting officers is only beneficial to the hardened criminals, who raise such grounds for annulling their arrests. In the words of the Judge–“It is very high time to prevent such violation of mandatory provisions inasmuch as the offender may take the benefit of the non-compliance of the aforesaid mandatory statutory requirements which is very much evident in this case and this Court has come across in so many cases about violations/infractions of the aforesaid provisions under Article 22(1)/Sec.47 of the BNSS (Sec.50 of CrPC) only enuring to the benefit of the offender to get out of the custody mainly on technical grounds.”In this case, an FIR was registered against the three petitioners/ accused persons for offences punishable under Sections 310(2)/311/111(3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) read with Sections 25/27 of the Arms Act, on the main allegation of committing robbery of Rs. 27,00,000/- from the Indian Bank, Mandhatapur in Nayagarh District. The petitioners approached the High Court under Section 483 of the BNSS seeking bail.A common ground for bail was raised by all the three petitioners. They alleged that they were not provided with the grounds of arrest while being arrested by the police. Therefore, they sought immediate release from custody for violation of the mandate under Section 47 of the BNSS and Article 21(1) of the Constitution, duly amplified by the landmark judgment of the Apex Court in Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra & Anr, 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 1066.Pertinent to mention, Section 47(1) of the BNSS mandatorily requires every police officer or other person arresting any person without warrant to forthwith communicate to him full particulars of the offence for which he is arrested or other grounds for such arrest. Similarly, Article 22(1) inter alia says no person who is arrested shall be detained in custody without being informed, as soon as may be, of the grounds for such arrest.Further, in Mihir Rajesh Shah (supra), the Supreme Court directed that the grounds of arrest must be communicated in writing to the arrestee in the language he/she understands. In case(s) where, the arresting officer/person is unable to communicate the grounds of arrest in writing on or soon after arrest, it is to be done orally. However, the said grounds to be communicated in writing within a reasonable time and in any case at least two hours prior to production of the arrestee for remand proceedings before the Magistrate.Even though the Investigating Officer submitted to have complied with the aforesaid mandatory provisions, it was found by the Court upon perusal of the arrest memo that under the heading of “Grounds of arrest”, the following was mentioned – “Under the strength of above noted case”. Therefore, the Court was of the view that –“The compliance as required U/S.47 of BNSS/Article 22(1) of Constitution of India has not been done in this case because the arrest memo only reflects about the sentence “under the strength of above noted case”. Further, neither the arrest memo contains the particular of the offences nor the grounds of such arrest in any column nor can it be said that the grounds of arrest has been communicated to the arrestee in writing in the language he understands.”Justice Satapathy went a step ahead in advising that in order to establish compliance of the aforesaid statutory/constitutional provisions, the arresting officer should obtain an “acknowledgement from the detainee” about the information of grounds of his arrest in writing in the language he understands. He clarified that merely mentioning that the grounds of arrest have been informed/communicated to the detainee is not sufficient compliance.Therefore, considering the factual matrix against the backdrop of settled position of law, the Court had no option but to hold the arrests to have been vitiated for want of compliance with the above-noted procedural mandates. Thus, the three petitioners were ordered to be released on bail.However, before concluding the order, the Court expressed disappointment over mushrooming bail applications on similar grounds of procedural non-compliance by police officers. It thus observed–“It is, therefore, considered appropriate to inform the Director General of Police, Odisha and the Principal Secretary to Home Department, Odisha to sufficiently train the police officers making arrest to comply the mandatory provisions of law, otherwise many hardened criminal [sic] will escape by taking this route, which is not in the interest of justice. In...

Orissa High Court Directs DGP & Home Department To Train Police Officers To Mandatorily Provide Written Grounds To Arrestees

Jyoti Prakash Dutta

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